The Earth and Sky Arc
by Shinigami no Seishi
Summary: First Love.  First Loss.  Kurama and Kuronue meet and set in motion the tragic end. [The first time Kuronue saw what was to be his death he thought 'how beautiful' because it was.]


**Author's Note:** I make shit up. But, hopefully, it'll be believable shit. Kuronue is non-cannon, and we know next to nothing about him, but he remains one of the most intriguing charaters in YYH, so I decided to see if I could elaborate in a way that stays true to the YYH universe. This is about first meetings, first loves, and first losses. At least, that's what I tried to make it about. Hope you enjoy!

Summer of the Garden

(Earth and Sky Arc 1)

The first time Kuronue saw what was to be his death he thought _how beautiful_ because it was. Or _he_ was, rather. Though in that first moment, gender wasn't really an issue.

Most things washed out in the soft yellow everywhere-but-nowhere light of the Makai day, but the young demon in Nishoku's gardens was brilliant silver, like starlight on water--long fall of hair, two fox ears, a tail, skin that was surprisingly flesh-toned. Kuronue had half-expected fur. He'd only ever heard of kitsune in legends, fireside stories of an ancient war that had wiped them out. Not entirely, it seemed.

_You can have run of my castle,_ Nishoku had said, _but do not disturb the treasure in the garden._

Kuronue had only barely crossed the threshold of the rose-latticed walls, when the silver kitsune had latched onto him with golden eyes. Hostility was like the gleam of a trap-wire between them--barely discernable, but deadly.

Silver and gold. Treasure in the garden. Nishoku was violent enough to make other demons quail.

Kuronue turned on his heels and walked away.

Castles made him edgy. Anything enclosed made him edgy, but castles especially, or maybe just _this_ one. Tarasho, leader of Kuronue's current rag-tag and motley crew, insisted the demon lord Nishoku was honest enough when it came to money, and took care of those under his employment, but Kuronue could still feel the walls of this place watching him always, waiting for him to screw up, waiting for a chance to punish him…

Castles made him edgy. And because of that, he kept wandering back to the only open space available.

The garden was vast. When he stood at one entrance and looked outward, he couldn't see the other end. Kuronue sat on the border between the castle and the gardens and stretched his wings, eyes skyward as he soaked up the light.

He wouldn't go any further. Even without Nishoku's warning, and the memory of the danger in the kitsune's gaze at their first meeting, Kuronue knew enough about plant life to realize that most of what grew in the garden was stronger and smarter than a majority of demons.

In the second week, a flicker of silver out of the corner of his eye made him turn his head and see where a branch of a rosebush had been bent. Because it had been a particularly good day--pay day, warm food in his belly, less snarling from Nishoku than usual--he reached out, straightened the branch and tied it to one of the lattices with a black ribbon from his braids, hoping the bush would heal.

The next day, at the entrance to the garden, there was a rose, neatly clipped and in full bloom, lying on the ground, his black ribbon done up delicately around the stem. The rosebush had been mended.

Half-expecting it to bite him or something similarly unpleasant, Kuronue picked up the rose, saluted with it to the endless garden, and went back inside. It wouldn't do well to linger just in case the kitsune changed his mind.

But after that, Kuronue would at least get a brief visitation during his stays at the garden's edge. Not usually anything more than a sense of being watched or a deliberate snapping of a twig to tell Kuronue he was there, but enough to keep Kuronue's interest piqued in the long days between jobs.

In his dreams he spread his wings and flew across the night while beneath him a silver fox kept pace with his shadow.

On the day they finished a job that had taken them nearly a month to complete, and which everyone had insisted couldn't be done, Nishoku invited them into his throne room to congratulate them personally, and bestow upon them a little something extra, which he was gracious enough to let them chose for themselves.

The demon lord enjoyed surrounding himself with objects of wealth and beauty, especially when he was in the mood to show off to the people he paid. He weighed himself down with expensive robes and jewelry, and there was always a new lovely-something from his harem on his arm.

That was the first day Kuronue saw the kitsune out of the garden, the day he stood before Nishoku for his reward askance, and the kitsune knelt at the demon lord's feet. Long, pale fingers were delicate on the lord's wrist, the kitsune steadying it as his tongue traced the lines of Nishoku's palm and fingers, barest hint of teeth as lips closed over the pad of the thumb.

It was not the most blatantly erotic thing Nishoku had ever had any of his harem do in the presence of the poor shmucks who wouldn't be getting any--at least nothing that refined--but it still was very…distracting.

Kuronue tried not to stare, though it was really a lost battle from the start, and Nishoku had brought the kitsune here so he could be stared at, that much was certain.

Still, curiosity or lust or a combination of both should not have accounted for the moment of insanity that occurred when Nishoku asked, "What do you wish as a reward?"

And Kuronue answered, "Permission to…" He managed to catch himself mid-sentence, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. Then a sliver of gold peered at him through lowered silver lashes. The kitsune snuck a look, though he never slowed what he was doing. Kuronue continued his original sentence. "Permission to speak to the treasure in your garden."

For a moment, the kitsune stared at him openly, task forgotten. The whole room had gone still, waiting to see what the demon lord would do at such a request.

It might have been the large profit Kuronue and the rest of the crew had just put directly into his pocket, or that they'd managed to kill a few of Nishoku's more persistent enemies in the process, or it could've been that he'd rolled out of the right side of the bed that morning. Whatever it was, instead of smiting Kuronue for such a ridiculous asking, the demon lord smiled instead.

It did not make Kuronue feel any better.

"Is that all you want?"

Kuronue said yes. The lord acquiesced, and the whole room breathed easy. The kitsune's expression was neutral and his eyes did not stray to Kuronue again.

Kuronue bowed and left and took a lot of ribbing for his request from the rest of his crew. But the castle walls seemed not to press in quite as forbiddingly anymore, and Kuronue looked forward to talking to the kitsune beneath the open sky.

The next day, it still took him a good half an hour of standing at the entrance of the garden to convince himself it was safe to go inside. When he stepped past the threshold and nothing ate him, he took it as a good sign.

An hour later, thoroughly lost and somewhat annoyed--though he wasn't sure who exactly to be annoyed with--he realized it was very possible that he'd been gypped. He wondered if the kitsune had been ordered to stay away from him, or if the creature was just stubborn and contrary by nature.

He had almost convinced himself that he'd passed the same noxious fuchsia flower leaking slime five times now and it was time to take wing and see if he couldn't get back to his starting point, when he stumbled across a very odd sight.

Somewhat separated from the tangled mess of the rest of the garden was a grove of three trees. They were fair-sized. Not saplings, but certainly not the monsters he'd seen twisting their way to the sky in the rest of garden. They were dark, smooth wood, strong, symmetrical branches arcing upward, lending a pleasing contrast to the delicate, pale pink blossoms that spilled and settled like a cloud upon the branches and ground.

Everything about the spot said _special place, not for you, don't linger here, don't touch_.

So Kuronue walked right up to the trees, and rubbed his hand over the smooth trunk, letting out a slightly exaggerated sigh of relief and pleasure. "Ah, what a perfect spot."

Then he turned and sat, folding his wings neatly as he leaned back against the largest of the trees. And he waited.

Not two minutes later, there was a deliberate snap of a twig from behind a dense grove of tall bushes. Kuronue ignored it, and made a show of getting comfortable.

"Are you going to come and join me?" he called.

There wasn't an answer, except the slightest whispery sound of someone moving, and then the feeling of being watched was gone. Kuronue smirked to himself. If the kitsune thought he could out-stubborn Kuronue, he was about to be surprised.

Kuronue came back every day he didn't have thirty other things that took up his time. He sat beneath the strange but lovely trees and talked himself hoarse. He never began with a topic in mind, but he had always been pretty good at filling silences with his own voice.

Sometimes he sensed watchful eyes, and usually more than a little hostility. He knew that coming here disturbed the kitsune, that this place was a sanctuary of some sort. But he had never been very good at playing defense. If the kitsune showed up to boot him off the property, at least he'd have forced the creature to make an appearance.

On a particularly lazy day, as pleasant as Makai days got--in that it wasn't raining and the wind was only strong enough to bend the trees a little, not break them, Kuronue stopped talking to watch the sky. Despite the fact that he could feel the kitsune nearby, he was restless. The wind tugged insistently on his clothes and hair, whispering of racing through clouds, of freedom. He contemplated leaving earlier than usual to glide a few times around the castle.

"How long do you plan to stay so stubbornly silent?" he said, because he was sure there wouldn't be an answer, because there never was, because the wind was impatient today and so was he.

"You were given permission to speak to me. I was not told I had to reply."

Oh, hello heart. What the hell are you doing up in my throat like that? Going to leap out of my mouth in shock, you say? Well, do tell.

Kuronue had to swallow a few times, and force himself to relax after the deep voice broke through the flowers in the branches above him. After a moment to gather composure, he tilted his head up with a cocky smile.

"But it makes for a more interesting conversation if two are speaking, don't you think?"

The kitsune was perched on a branch, his back against the trunk. He was framed by soft pink petals. His eyes were hard and bright.

"I don't want you here. The garden is mine."

It was an odd claim to make. Kuronue had assumed the kitsune was a slave, like most of the people in the castle who weren't guards or hired thugs and specialists.

"I'm not here for the garden."

Ears flicked toward him, and then swiveled around--not quite but almost laying flat. They were fascinating, those ears. They were impossibly cute. Kuronue refrained from saying so, barely.

"You can't have _me_, either."

At that, the winged demon laughed, a warm chuckle that bubbled up before he could stop it. "Aren't _you_ presumptuous."

The kitsune frowned, a little turn down of full lips--close enough to a pout that Kuronue didn't lose his smile.

"So what are you here for, then?" the silver kitsune asked.

Kuronue pointed up. The kitsune twitched, but didn't look, and Kuronue could understand the paranoia, so he supplemented with a spoken answer. "The sky."

Ears flicked again, and though the kitsune's expression was on neutral, the ears said _confused._

Kuronue smiled benignly and sat up away from the tree so he could spread his wings. "See?" He glanced back over his shoulder. "I like the open air, which is difficult to find inside closed walls. So…we're not _really_ sharing space. I'll leave your garden alone. I just want to watch the clouds."

"And talk to me," the kitsune pointed out.

"Well, yes." Kuronue smirked as he settled against the tree again. "But that's just because you're so _charming_."

There was a soft huff from the trees, not loud enough for Kuronue to tell if it was annoyance or amusement. But the deep, somewhat-rough voice didn't sound overly unfriendly when the kitsune spoke again.

"I will allow you the sky."

There was a shiver in the branches, a few petals fell, and when Kuronue looked up again with a sarcastic retort on his tongue, the kitsune was nowhere to be seen.

It began like that, and continued that way. The Makai didn't have seasons, but the days were getting shorter. The foliage was changing over in reflection to the shifting light. The flowers were going to sleep or to seed, except for the strange pink-flowered trees where Kuronue spent most of his off-hours.

"These aren't Makai trees, are they?" he asked one day when the light was the deep orange of almost-evening.

The kitsune was perched on his branch. He never came any closer. "No."

"How did you get them?"

"Seeds."

Kuronue reached up to run his fingers over the smooth bark of the trunk. "But these trees have to be a pretty decent age. You raised them from seeds?"

He'd been trying to figure the kitsune out. Plants responded to him the way wind did to Kuronue. The kitsune listened to trees and flowers, and when he spoke they bowed and did as they were asked. It was difficult to judge the kitsune's ki level, since nature, while powerful, was subtle and slow. Not at all like the wind.

"Where did you get the seeds?"

"Travelers."

"They gave you seeds from outside the Makai?" Anything from the Outer Worlds tended to be rare and, therefore, valuable. Kuronue didn't think for a moment that the kitsune had paid for them.

Kuronue was getting better at reading the kitsune's subtle body language. A flick of his ears and twitch of his tail meant he was smiling, even if it didn't show on his face.

"'Gave' is not, perhaps, the correct word for it."

Kuronue grinned. "Thief." The word was affectionate, and not disputed. So they fell into another comfortable silence while Kuronue let this newest piece of information settle in his mind.

His right wing ached. He'd clipped it on a branch dodging what would have been a fatal blow from a sword a few days back, and the bruise hadn't yet faded. Absently, he rubbed the tender joint.

"Do they work?"

Kuronue blinked and looked up. "What?"

"Your wings. Or are they just decoration?"

Kuronue stretched them to their full breadth. They were black, darkest where the bones ran through them, lightest where skin stretched thin between, the veins showing faintly as the light hit them. "They work."

Golden eyes studied him critically.

"Gliding, mostly," Kuronue admitted. "And with them I can jump three times higher than another demon my size. If the winds are good--which they usually are--and I catch it from high enough off the ground, say from a cliff or a castle parapet, I can stay aloft over very long distances."

"Can you carry anyone else? Or just yourself?"

It depended on the winds, mostly. He _could_ carry things--sometimes even other demons--over short periods of time, if the wind were obliging and decided to listen to him. It was not as stable a partner as plantlife.

"Why? Do you want to fly with me, kitsune?"

Silver ears quivered even as the kitsune's expression closed. "No."

"Don't be shy, kitsune. I would like to share the sky with you."

The kitsune's mouth worked. Lips--a blush of deeper color in his pale face--disappeared as he pressed them into a line. Kuronue waited to see if he'd leave or stay. The kitsune sometimes displayed the huffy temper of a young child.

"That would be rather difficult, since you aren't allowed to touch me."

A valid point, but it was more of a distraction than an actual answer, so Kuronue ignored it. "Have you ever been flying?"

"I don't have wings."

"What? There isn't some handy plant life that could give you gliders, at least?"

"…there is."

"So?"

The kitsune's eyes flashed anger, and something close to pain. "I'm not allowed."

Kuronue blinked and felt around that statement carefully. There was something in the way the kitsune held himself that reminded Kuronue of an open wound.

"You've tried before," he said, watching for a reaction.

The kitsune's face was blank, but his ears flinched.

Kuronue didn't know how far he could push, but decided to go a bit further. "Tried to run away?"

For a long moment, the kitsune didn't answer, and Kuronue was almost ready to change the topic, when he shifted, fingers drifting over a petal. "Didn't know a thing about flying. It's a lot harder than it looks."

Which was another way of saying _I tried and failed_. From the tension in the kitsune's body, Kuronue guessed the punishment for the attempt had been severe enough to leave a lasting impression and fear.

He kept his voice casual. "There's a trick to it. Once you learn that, the rest is easy."

The kitsune turned his head away, closing the topic, but Kuronue continued with a slight grin, sensing a challenge. "I'll teach you."

Sometime after that, things began to change. Kuronue couldn't have pinpointed an exact moment under pain of torture. But one day, he found himself sitting under perpetually blooming trees, trying to demonstrate some of the nuances of flying with a leaf in one hand as the kitsune listened with a rapt attention that might have been worthy of a good teasing on anyone else, and realized that this wasn't just a game, anymore. What had begun as a distraction, a curiosity, had turned into something he looked forward to and regretted not having on the days he couldn't make it to the garden.

This was also about the same time that he realized that he was in trouble. The kind of trouble that was lord of this keep. The kind of trouble that would string him from his small intestine off the ramparts if he knew of the affection Kuronue harbored.

Which didn't explain why he turned the leaf slightly with a small movement of fingers and brushed its tip against the kitsune's lower lip. Except, then, the silver-haired creature gave him a small smile, one that made his eyes warm as the golden afternoon light, and Kuronue's heart stuttered and…

Well, shit.

This was looking worse and worse.

Then the kitsune ate the leaf, white, even teeth biting it right in half, and that startled Kuronue out of his inner grumbling.

"What did you do that for?"

"Don't poke me with things." The threat was not serious, though the expression on the kitsune's face was--almost comically so--as he chewed the leaf.

It took a lot of restraint not to say _anything_ to that. Nothing at all. Certainly nothing dirty.

"Are you sure this is edible?" Kuronue asked finally, studying his leaf stump.

"It's a type of mint. I'm not in danger of dying. Poisons don't affect me strongly anyway. Not organic ones."

Kuronue took that bit of information and put in the box of "Things He Knew About the Kitsune" that was in his mind. It wasn't a very large box, for which Kuronue was deeply resentful, or at least somewhat irked.

The wind was laughing, sensuous and sly as it caressed the petals in the trees overhead, where deep purple twined though the branches.

They were new, these flowers. They'd appeared as the days began getting longer again, curling benignly around the dark trunks, weaving carefully with the delicate pink blossoms.

He reached up to one that was low enough to touch and cupped it in his hand. The glow from the pollen in the center was a soft light through closed petals.

The kitsune watched him. "They're called Evening Star," he said, then leaned forward onto one hand, sliver hair sliding over his shoulder to brush against the ground. The other hand lifted to skim a finger over the petals on the flower, which quivered and opened slowly, pollen escaping in a small cascade, like tiny shooting stars that faded before they hit the ground.

"It's beautiful," Kuronue said quietly.

"I agree," the kitsune murmured. "They are the same color as your eyes."

Now they were looking at each other from a distance so close that Kuronue could taste the mint still on the other's breath. Golden eyes watched him with the expectation of a kiss, and Kuronue couldn't say the assumption was wrong.

"You know, if I do this…" he said, tilting his head the fraction needed to brush those words against the other's warm lips, "I'm going to be in a lot of trouble, later."

"Not as much trouble as you'll be in _now_ if you _don't_," the kitsune contradicted, amused but not really joking.

Kuronue tasted mint on a slick tongue that tasted him with a surprising amount of enthusiasm. He'd have expected a response much more coy from the cool kitsune. But this wasn't something he was going to complain about. And, he realized distantly, as he tangled his fingers is silver hair, this wasn't something he was going to stop.

Above them, Evening Stars bloomed in shimmers of light as the sky darkened.

It ended in the depths of the Makai summer, or what passed for that season in a timeless realm. The garden was lush and vibrantly deadly, every flower was open and hungry, all the greenery clawing its way to the sky.

Kuronue hadn't seen the kitsune in three days.

He'd wandered the garden during his free time, lingering by the pink-flowered trees, poking carefully through the kitsune's other haunts, but he was nowhere to be found, and the plants were restless, which made lingering amongst them a bad idea.

He kept telling himself that this was neither obsessive, nor was he worried. But after finding himself at the garden entrance for the third time in just as many hours, he had to admit maybe both were true.

It wasn't as if there was much else to do, he argued internally, stepping down the familiar path. He hadn't seen anyone from his group in a few days. The castle was big and the territory around it expansive, encompassing quite a few towns, so it wasn't all that abnormal. When there was another job, Nishoku would summon them to the main hall. Still, the lack of visible allies was making him edgy. Perhaps after this he'd make an effort to find some of his drinking buddies, go to a backwater pub and stop thinking about the kitsune for a while.

That plan in mind, he only intended to do a cursory run past the pink-flowered trees and a few other familiar spots, but he didn't have to go that far. The kitsune was waiting for him on the path shadowed under black, twisted bows.

As soon as their eyes met, Kuronue froze, instincts screaming a warning. The kitsune's gaze and stance were dangerous. The winged demon was suddenly aware of every shifting branch and stirring leaf--all the kitsune's allies, surrounding him.

Kuronue smelled blood. He smelled blood he could _recognize_, a few threaded scents amidst the faint stench gore and death--Jian, Maku, drinking companions from his company, Tarasho, his leader. Still, the kitsune was pristine in white, silver hair unfettered, pale face unblemished.

"What is this?" Kuronue demanded. His weapons were ready, threaded through a clip on his belt, a reassuring weight. But he didn't reach for them, yet. There was something else going on. He could read it in the tension of the kitsune's shoulders, in the way that golden eyes stayed fixed on him with a resolve that seemed forced.

Someone else was nearby, watching.

Kuronue likewise, kept his eyes focused on the kitsune, digging his toes in and unfurling his wings a bit for better balance. His other senses stretched out, listening to the way the air curled around branches, streamlined the forms until they built an image in his head, etched in his mind like scratched glass. There was someone standing up and to right, nearly invisible to everything but his wind-sense, surprisingly large for its silence.

He wasn't sure what was going on, but best to at least expose all the pieces in this puzzle.

When the kitsune's tension level jumped as he prepared to attack, Kuronue unclipped his weapons--two arced scythe-blades like head-sized silver claws, linked together by a faint but near unbreakable chain--and sent one spinning out to shore away the vines where the third party member hid. The other he threw in an arc meant to move the kitsune back out of immediate attacking distance, the blade of his weapon singing as it cleaved air.

Nishoku stood exposed as the vines fell away, the surprised look fading into a sharp, dark smile. The sense of worry and alarm Kuronue had been feeling coalesced into a tight fist of shock and instant dread conclusions.

_Nishoku knows, everyone's dead, oh _shit--

His wings flapped as he leapt back, and recalled his weapons with a jerk of his wrist. He intended to take himself as far away as possible. He intended to run like hell.

Kurama made a pulling gesture with one hand, and something slammed Kuronue into the ground. He could feel the bone in his left wing snap, and for a few moments his world was dizzy pain as he tried to gasp air back into his lungs. He kicked out instinctively when a thick vine wound around one leg, choking as another snapped around his throat and squeezed, and the ground or maybe just the weeds were rising up like a wave, closing overhead like a coffin.

The last thing he saw before the light was swallowed up were golden eyes watching him with remorseless calm.

It ended in the depths of a holding cell, somewhere deep in the ground. The walls felt like rotten, hungry wood. Kuronue had grown familiar with their rough-damp feel, because he was pressed back into them and they'd formed partially around his wrists, down his arms, clinging to and holding his legs and torso. The wall had pulled in most of his wings, immobilizing them.

There weren't any doors, no light except when Nishoku brought a torch, just miles of dirt, pressing in on all sides. His heartbeat was loud, but the sound of his breathing disappeared into the darkness so that sometimes he took a deep breath just to feel his lungs fill.

It was difficult to hear anything, as if the world ended just beyond his nose and at the tips of how far he could extend his fingertips, nothing else to fill the trickle of days.

Lack of light and sound shot all his other senses into hyper-sensitivity, until Kuronue couldn't think, could only feel and taste and smell until his mind started to shut down. Too much sensation without anything to focus on.

So he closed his senses off, until everything, even the pain--which was considerable; Nishoku was not kind to those who displeased him--blurred into vague theory. He knew bones were broken, he knew skin was missing, but it had become a state of being more than particular moments of agony.

His long black days and nights were only interrupted by visits from Nishoku himself, bearing light that nearly blinded Kuronue after so much time without. Pain-tears misting his vision, he almost could convince himself there wasn't a silver sentinel in the back corners of the room, who accompanied every visit but never moved far enough into the radius of the torch to be seen as more than a small patch of white pants, bare feet.

What had he expected, really? The kitsune didn't owe him anything. And whatever small coil of resentment born of expectations Kuronue felt uncurl in his chest, he crushed far down, where neither Nishoku nor the presence of the kitsune could touch it. This was hope, and hope wouldn't keep him sane.

"You are foolish." The words brushed cool against Kuronue's fever-hot cheek. "Do you really intend to die here?"

Be reasonable, Kuronue wanted to say, it's not like this was something I planned.

"Why did you choose me? When you could have had anything. When riches were at your fingertips."

Kuronue thought it was unfair, for dreams to ask such complicated questions, especially when it was obvious he wasn't really in the best of conditions. But the question was there, glimmering in the dark like starlight on water, and when he concentrated on it, he realized it wasn't all that difficult to answer.

"You were…" The words were rough on a dry tongue. "…all…I wanted."

The last time Nishoku entered Kuronue's cell, he didn't carry a torch. He came through the hole that always opened for him, and the light from outside was enough to illuminate the small space. He had a rolling, cocky gait. He knew Kuronue wasn't going to retaliate, had trouble moving at all, and he stood close enough that his breath shifted the hair falling limply about Kuronue's face.

His voice was smug. Kuronue couldn't understand the low gloating words, and wasn't really trying to. He was focused on the kitsune, who stood in the light for once, silver-bright. The golden eyes were tired. The tilt of his chin was arrogant.

The cock of his ears said, _Well, what are you waiting for?_

Kuronue's suddenly-loosed arm wrenched free of the wall as he used every particle of strength left to drive his fist into Nishoku's face. As the demon lord fell back, spikes of twisted wood spiraled up from the floor to impale him.

For a long moment, there was nothing but Kuronue panting for breath, the kitsune, who looked impressed for once, and the body of the greatest warlord in the southern province cooling at their feet.

Then the winged demon slumped and the kitsune stepped forward to catch him as the wall slowly let go.

"What…took you?" Kuronue rasped.

"I expected you to come up with some means of escape yourself."

Kuronue's growl cut short with a wince as the kitsune closed arms carefully around him, catching on his wings.

"If you…intended to kill him…why didn't you…sooner?"

"I was making preparations."

The kitsune was curling himself around Kuronue as if to protect him. The room was--shrinking, folding in. Nishoku's body was lost in a fold, separated from them.

Kuronue flailed suddenly, headless of sharp pain from protesting wounds. "No!"

"Shhh…"

"No! The walls--" The freedom, so close, was disappearing.

"Hush you fool. I control them. They're not going to kill us."

The kitsune tightened his arms and Kuronue hissed, but then quieted as the light disappeared and he was in darkness again. But this time, instead of the pressing nothing, there was the kitsune's hair tickling his neck, and the pain that concentrated where the kitsune's arm was around Kuronue's back, awkward against his wings. His breath against Kuronue's cheek.

"Um…"

"What?"

"Not to complain or anything but…what are we doing?"

There was a long, irritated pause. "We're escaping."

"Huh." Hope was in his mind, bright and clear, and that made his sense of humor bubble back to life. "I always envisioned escaping to be more running, less lying aro--"

The rest of his sentence fading into hacking coughs, each one like a stab in the lung. When it was over, he lay panting in the kitsune's arms, watching the pretty burst of pain-sparks in the dark.

"Finished?"

"I'm good. I don't…suppose…you…have water?"

"No. But in a moment, you won't need it."

"Okay, what the hell does that--"

The ground had begun to vibrate, a sound so deep it hummed through his skin, into his bones, into his blood. He tried to form more sentences, words, but they were choked in his throat by the swell of power in the air, like a tide.

Outside--crunching sounds, faint screaming, like a gigantic animal being torn to shreds by an angry storm. Inside, it was only the kitsune and Kuronue, and the breath between them, and the power rising.

The kitsune was a light, glowing faintly, a moon, pulling the power to him. Kuronue couldn't help but be pulled as well, and where his hands touched he felt energy focus, a prickle of heat and static shock.

_This is never and forever_.

Kuronue started, the words like solid things taking form in the kitsune's voice. There wasn't a lot of room to move; he couldn't see the kitsune's face.

"What?"

_This is always and ever again. This is what we've waited for, the circle complete._

"Okay…" Stupid vague prophetic poetry. If the kitsune was going to spout random phrases like that the least he could have done was to provide Kuronue with some means of writing it down to be puzzled over later. Otherwise, if any of this was important at all, that was too bad, because he'd never remember it.

The kitsune grabbed a fistful of his hair, and Kuronue yelped, but there wasn't much he was going to do to stop a guy who was glowing like that.

_Focus me._

"Ouch! What?"

_Focus me. Conduit, key, inner circuitry._

The power flared violently. The noise outside was a crescendo like the crash of a wave. The kitsune twisted Kuronue's hair and shifted his own body until they were face-to-face, and his eyes were needy, vibrant this close, desperate and not-quiet-seeing Kuronue, even at this range.

"Focus, huh?"

Kuronue did the first and only thing that came to mind, with his arms pinned and his own power dwarfed and his body reacting to the closeness of another body. He kissed the kitsune.

(Who tasted sweet and somewhat…plant-y. Like what the stem tips of young grass tasted like.)

Then there was a jolt, like getting kicked in the gut by lightning.

Kuronue found himself on his back, staring up at the pale sky thinking--what a pretty color…

An eternity later, the kitsune leaned over him. "Get up."

"Don't bother me, Silvertails." Kuronue stretched, reveling in the lack of pain. The power, whatever it was, had left him healed and feeling languid. "I'm enjoying the afterglow."

"We didn't have sex." One ear tilted in annoyance. "And don't call me that."

"Might as well have, and since you haven't given me a name, yet, I think I'll just invent my own."

The ear straightened itself, and the kitsune considered him carefully for a heartbeat. "Kurama," he said, sitting up, out of Kuronue's field of vision.

"Oh, _that_ won't do."

"Excuse me?" There was an irritated shift of weight beside him.

"Your name. Then we'll have two K-U-R names in the team."

"What team? Your team's dead."

Kuronue winced. "Thanks for that reminder, but who said we couldn't build a new team?"

"Who said I'm going to come with you?"

"I said." Kuronue sat up and took in the scenery around him--desolate nothing as far as he could see. The land was flat and cracked, parched. "Great place, by the way. Where are we?"

"We're at the heart of what used to be Nishoku's castle grounds."

Kuronue blinked, and looked again at the nothing that surrounded them, as if that might conjure a sudden _something_ to arise. "…come again?"

"This is where the castle used to be."

"And yet…it doesn't appear to be here anymore."

"No."

"It was a big castle. You can't just misplace something like that."

"No."

"And it was here just a moment ago."

"Yes."

"Kurama." Kuronue gave him a steely look, enunciating. "What happened to it?"

"I asked it to die."

Kuronue let that settle for a moment, wondering if it would make any more sense if he thought about it for a while. "You asked it to die?"

Kuronue wondered how much of that castle had been organic. A lot of the framework--support pillars, buttresses, archways--had been living wood, twisted and blackened but still alive, much like the forest outside that had stretched on for miles. Nishoku's greatest first defense had been those sleepless, hungry trees.

"The castle was alive. Most of it. Some was stone, of course, but most of it I shaped myself, from nothing but a seed. In this place." He looked out across the wasteland. "I was good with plants. It's the only power he allowed me."

Something hard and fierce entered golden eyes. "They were mine. They were all mine. The garden was only a small part. I made the forest. I grew the castle. Every leaf, every plant within a fifty-mile radius belonged to me."

"That…must have taken a long time."

"A thousand years."

The wind shifted, lifting strands of hair like spun silver. Kuronue pushed his own hair--unbound after so long a captivity--back irritably.

"You're a thousand years old, you had all this power, and you wait until _now_ to do this? Why?"

"I wanted to survive my escape. Pulling that much power back into me at once would have killed me if it hadn't been for you."

"Me?"

The kitsune stood up, ears forward and attentive as he looked toward the horizon. "We should go. We are exposed now and it would be unwise to linger."

"No, wait." Kuronue hopped to his feet with a flap of wings. "You're going to explain what you did or we aren't going anywhere."

"I think I should be the leader."

"What? Leader of what?"

"Of this pack you said we could build. Clearly, you are too preoccupied with details."

"Kurama."

"I don't know what your name is, either."

That broke his focus for a moment, distracting him from the argument. "It's Kuronue."

"Ah. That thing you said before makes more sense now."

The kitsune was walking away. He'd turned his back on Kuronue as if it didn't matter. Kuronue was no longer armed, but that didn't mean he'd tolerate that sort of insult.

A jump and flap of wings and he blocked the kitsune's path. Kurama stopped, humor dropping into wariness.

"Why me?" Kuronue asked.

Kurama's ears flicked and his tail twitched as his sardonic amusement returned in that body-language smile. "Because it's what you wanted."

Kuronue was about to deny that he'd ever said such a thing, when a fragment of a memory nudged him. It was fever-hazy and comprised mostly of disembodied voices, but it was there.

Kurama raised an eyebrow at his silence, a smirk hovering around his lips, and then stepped past Kuronue, who let him, turning to follow after a moment.

"So what are we? Does this make us joined at the soul or something?"

Kurama glared.

"I'm just curious." Kuronue flexed his powers a bit and could feel the edges like fused glass where they met with the kitsune's aura. It was a strange sensation, but not unpleasant.

"I am free for the first time in a thousand years. I don't wish to spend the day discussing semantics."

Kuronue grinned a little as he opened his wings. The wind tried to lift him, little tugs and playful pulls. The sky above was open like wide, welcoming arms. "You're right. This is a good day."

"A good day?"

"A good day to learn how to fly."

It was late in the Makai summer, air hot and but obligingly buoyant, when Kuronue taught the silver, sharp-tongued fox demon who would be his death how to kiss the sky.


End file.
